Search results for ""Author John Lithgow""

Dumpty: The Age of Trump in Verse is Volume 1 of a satirical poetry collection from award-winning actor and bestselling author John Lithgow. Chronicling the last few raucous years in American politics, Lithgow takes readers verse by verse through the history of Donald Trump's presidency. • Lampoons the likes of Betsy DeVos, William Barr, Rudy Giuliani, and dozens more. • Illustrated from cover to cover with Lithgow's never-before-seen line drawings. • Draws inspiration from A. A. Milne, Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, and even Mother Goose. • Great for fans of A Very Stable Genius by Mike Luckovich, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter by Scott Adams, and The Donald J. Trump Presidential Twitter Library by The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. The poems collected in Dumpty draw inspiration from A. A. Milne, Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Mother Goose, and many more. A feat of laugh-out-loud lyrical storytelling, this timely volume is bound to bring joy to poetry lovers, political junkies, and Lithgow fans alike. Audio edition read by the author.

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The next book in John Lithgow's New York Times bestselling series Following the success of New York Times bestsellers Dumpty and Trumpty Dumpty Wanted a Crown, award-winning actor, author, and illustrator John Lithgow presents the third book in his runaway hit series. A Confederacy of Dumptys takes us through a history of twenty-five "American Scoundrels" in this all-new collection of Lithgow's satirical poems and illustrations. While the Trump Era was rife with corruption and abuse of power, it was nothing new. Through Lithgow's cutting humor, you will read about a rogues' gallery of villains that came before Donald J. Trump, powerful men and women who were corrupt, venal, criminal, adulterous, racist, or just plain disgusting. With dark and lyrical stories from across American history, you will learn about long-forgotten figures and bad actors of today, including the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, the perpetrator of 19th century women's pyramid schemes, and participants in both the Watergate scandal and the Capitol insurrection. Trump and Nixon show up, of course, but also Leona Helmsley, Boss Tweed, Typhoid Mary, Newt Gingrich, Ted Cruz, and many more. Skipping through time, and delivered with classic Lithgow wit and style, A Confederacy of Dumptys is an exuberant reminder of how not to repeat history. The perfect book for: • Political satire fans—viewers of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. • American history buffs and trivia enthusiasts—readers of Jon's Stewart's America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction and Josh Clark's Stuff You Should Know: An Incomplete Compendium of Mostly Interesting Things. • Poetry, art, and illustration aficionados.

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In this riveting and surprising personal history, John Lithgow shares a backstage view of his own struggle, crisis, and discovery, revealing the early life and career that took place out of the public eye and before he became a nationally known star. Above all, Lithgow's memoir is a tribute to his most important influence: his father, Arthur Lithgow, who, as an actor, director, producer, and great lover of Shakespeare, brought theater to John's boyhood. From bedtime stories to Arthur's illustrious productions, performance and storytelling were constant and cherished parts of family life. "Drama" tells of the Lithgows' countless moves between Arthur's gigs-John attended eight secondary schools before flourishing onstage at Harvard - and details with poignancy and sharp recollection the moments that introduced a budding young actor to the undeniable power of theater. Before Lithgow gained fame with the film "The World According to Garp" and the television show "3rd Rock from the Sun", his early years were full of scenes both hilarious and bittersweet. A shrewd acting performance saved him from duty in Vietnam. His involvement with a Broadway costar brought an end to his early first marriage. The theater worlds of New York and London come alive as Lithgow relives his collaborations with renowned performers and directors, including Mike Nichols, Bob Fosse, Liv Ullmann, and Meryl Streep. His ruminations on the nature of theater, film acting, and storytelling cut to the heart of why actors are driven to perform, and why people are driven to watch them do it. Lithgow's memory is clear and his wit sharp, and much of the humor that runs throughout "Drama" comes at his own expense. But he also chronicles the harrowing moments of his past, reflecting with moving candor on friends made and lost, mistakes large and small, and the powerful love of a father who set him on the road to a life onstage. Illuminating, funny, affecting, and thoroughly engrossing, "Drama" raises the curtain on the making of one of our most beloved actors.

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A mischievous boy slips away from his teacher during a field trip to a natural history museum and, after the museum closes, sees all of the people he knows transformed into animals.

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New York Times Besteller Following the success of New York Times bestseller Dumpty comes Volume 2 of award-winning actor and national bestselling author John Lithgow’s next book of satirical poetry chronicling the era of Trump madness. Darker, funnier, and more hard-hitting than ever, Lithgow writes with poetic fury and cutting satire, taking readers verse-by-verse through the last year of even more unthinkable and shocking real events surrounding Trump and his administration—including poems about the impeachment, Rudy Giuliani, Mick Mulvaney, Jay Sekulow, Jim Jordan, Roger Stone, and others. With completely new poems and never-before-seen line drawings, Lithgow will once again make readers laugh in frenzied times with this mix of striking and humorous prose—dismantling the reign of Dumpty one stanza at a time. Audio edition read by the author.

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Here is the story, told firsthand through electric, deeply engaged writing, of America’s living theater, high and low, mainstream and experimental. Drawing on history, criticism, memoir, fiction, poetry, and parody, editor Laurence Senelick presents writers with the special knack “to distill both the immediate experience and the recollected impression, to draw the reader into the charmed circle and conjure up what has already vanished.” Through the words of playwrights and critics, actors and directors, and others behind the footlights, the entertainments and high artistic strivings of successive eras come vividly, sometimes tumultuously, to life.Observers from Washington Irving and Fanny Trollope to Walt Whitman and Mark Twain evoke the world of the nineteenth-century playhouse in all its raucous vitality. Henry James confesses his early enthusiasm for playgoing; Willa Cather reviews provincial productions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Antony and Cleopatra. The increasing diversity and ambition of the American theater is reflected in Hutchins Hapgood’s account of New York’s Yiddish theaters at the turn of the century, Carl Van Vechten’s review of the Sicilian actress Mimi Aguglia, Alain Locke’s comments on the emerging African-American theater in the 1920s, and Ezra Pound’s response to James Joyce’s play Exiles and theatrical modernism. Enthusiasts for the New Stagecraft, such as Lee Simonson and Djuna Barnes, are matched by champions of pop culture such as Gilbert Seldes and Fred Allen. S. J. Perelman lampoons Clifford Odets; Edmund Wilson acclaims Minsky’s Burlesque; Harold Clurman explains Stanislavski’s Method; Gore Vidal dissects the compromises of commercial playwriting. A host of playwrights—among them Thornton Wilder, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Lorraine Hansberry, Edward Albee, Wendy Wasserstein, David Mamet, and Tony Kushner—are joined by such renowned critics as Stark Young, George Jean Nathan, Brooks Atkinson, and Eric Bentley.LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

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